Time to Homeownership and Mortgage Design

Accessibility to homeownership in western countries, especially for middle to low income earners has decreased over time due to several factors such as stringent covenants, pressure of rental growth on household income expenditure and a negative gap between wage and house price growth. Moreover, young households face higher accumulated student loans and, in a steadily rising and strong rental market, they are not able to generate enough savings to cover the initial deposit necessary to become homeowners. We design an income sharing mortgage product where borrowers accept to pledge a portion of their future income to anticipate the time necessary to become homeowners by obtaining a higher LTV (up to 100%). Our analysis nds that this mortgage may be useful for lower income households in periods of higher uncertainty and that it may become less expensive in a high interest rate environment. Finally, this product also embeds an incentive to save, with potential benefits for the overall systemic risk of the banking sector. As a consequence we find that the default
risk is not higher than a plain vanilla mortgage with lower LTV.